The aim of this study is to investigate how social workers engaged in child welfare investigations experience and manage the balance between care and control in their interactions with the child and the child’s guardians when making decisions about consensual placements. Although the intervention is formally consensual, it is characterized by an asymmetrical power relationship and a latent threat of coercive measures. The study was conducted using a qualitative method and is based on semi-structured interviews with seven social workers employed in child and family social services in two Swedish municipalities. The collected empirical material was analyzed with the theoretical concept and theories of street-level bureaucracy, professional discretion and pastoral power. The results of this study demonstrates that relational work is central to the creation of trust and the enabling of cooperation. At the same time it enables intrusive decisions when the child’s situation so requires. Furthermore, this study suggests that guardians' consent is rarely understood as entirely consensual. Instead, it is shaped through motivational work, repeated information and relationship-building conversations, within a context in which compulsory care constitutes a latent threat. Moreover, social workers' professional discretion is influenced by organizational structures such as time constraints and documentation requirements. Finally, the study results illustrate how consensual placements are formed through a complex interplay between relational work, professional responsibility and the exercise of power. In social workers’ professional practice, care and control appear as mutually dependent.